Chapter 818: Step… Guard… Cut… [Bonus - ]

Chapter 818: Step… Guard… Cut… [Bonus Chapter]

She swept the red pine needles from the stone risers.

“Mmmhmmm~ Sweeping sweeping~”

She swept the fallen yellow leaves into neat piles along the dirt verge, chased away the mountain squirrels that tried to bury walnuts in the cracks, and made sure every single stone was bare before the village woodcutters began their daily climb.

By the time the sun broke over the eastern ridge, her hands were calloused and brown with her cheeks flushed pink beneath the dust and her little chest heaving with pride as she looked back up the long, pristine staircase.

…After sweeping came the daily chores.

Rèn ran down to the mountain spring carrying two wooden buckets slung over a bamboo shoulder pole, splashing cold water over her bare toes as she hauled it up to the kitchen vats.

She chased the scrawny brown hens around the dirt yard with handfuls of cracked corn, laughing as they pecked at her heels, and in the afternoons, she sat beside the washbasin behind the dining hall, scrubbing grease and charred rice from heavy cast-iron pots until her arms ached and her fingers wrinkled.

Whenever the heavy mountain rains rolled in from the west, the sect’s main hall became a chaotic circus.

The roof was ancient and riddled with rotted shingles that had not been replaced in a decade.

The moment the downpour began, water would start dripping through the ceiling in twenty different places simultaneously, splashing down onto the worn floorboards with loud clatters.

PLINK! PLINK! DRIP!

“Quick, fetch the washbasin!” the older boys would yell, kicking off their slippers as they scrambled across the mats.

“The library corner is leaking over the scrolls!” someone else would scream.

Rèn would sprint through the hallways carrying cracked ceramic bowls, wooden chamber pots, and copper buckets, sliding across the wet pine boards on her knees, slamming a container down under a leak with a triumphant cheer right as a stray drop splashed her nose.

Everyone would run around slipping and sliding, shouting warnings and laughing until their bellies ached, listening to the rain drumming against the tiles while the old Master sat peacefully by the hearth, sipping bitter barley tea with a contented smile.

…And every single morning, without fail, there was Qiu Ling.

Qiu Ling was fifteen years old, the eldest female disciple and the most naturally talented cultivator the Quiet Pine Sect had ever produced in three generations.

She had a face like a pale lotus, gentle dark eyes that crinkled into crescent moons when she smiled, and a quiet graceful core that could draw spiritual qi with effortless fluid ease.

Every morning after breakfast, Qiu Ling would sit on the low wooden stool outside the kitchen, patting her knee.

“Come here, little monkey,” Qiu Ling would call out softly, holding up a polished wooden comb. “Let’s see what kind of bird made a nest in your head today…”

Rèn would bound over like an eager hound, plonking herself down cross-legged on the floorboards between Qiu Ling’s knees, leaning her head back against her Senior Sister’s shins.

Rèn’s hair was impossibly thick and untamed, defying every attempt she made to tie it herself but Qiu Ling never pulled too hard.

Her long slender fingers were wonderfully gentle, working through the stubborn tangles with fragrant camellia oil, carefully weaving the black strands into two neat tight braids that hung down over Rèn’s shoulders.

“There,” Qiu Ling would whisper, tying the ends off with scraps of clean red ribbon, leaning down to plant a soft, sweet kiss right onto the crown of Rèn’s forehead. “…Now you look like a proper young lady instead of a wild badger.”

At dinner in the communal hall, while the older boys noisily argued over the last pickled radish and the Master was busy looking out the window, Qiu Ling’s wooden chopsticks would move with lightning speed.

PLOP!

A large steaming mound of white rice would mysteriously appear atop Rèn’s chipped ceramic bowl, followed by the juiciest braised mushroom or the largest piece of salted pork.

When Rèn looked up with wide guilty eyes, Qiu Ling would merely place a slender finger against her lips, offering her a sweet conspiratorial wink.

“Eat, little one,” Qiu Ling would whisper softly under the din of the table. “You’re still growing… Brooms don’t push themselves.”

And on cold stormy winter nights, when the mountain wind howled through the eaves like screaming mountain specters and Rèn’s dreams filled with the suffocating, phantom terrors of the dark alleys where she had almost starved to death as an infant, she would wake up sobbing with her breath hitching in her chest.

She would slide out of her narrow pallet, tiptoe across the freezing floorboards, and push open the door to Qiu Ling’s room.

The older girl never scolded her.

The moment the wooden latch clicked, Qiu Ling would lift the heavy cotton quilt, her warm arm opening wide in the darkness.

“Did the wind scare you again, Rèn?” Qiu Ling would murmur, pulling the shivering little girl close against her chest, wrapping her in the sweet soothing warmth of her skin.

Rèn would bury her tear-streaked face into the crook of Qiu Ling’s neck, clutching her Senior Sister’s sleep robe like an iron lifeline.

Then, lying in the dark while the rain lashed the paper windowpanes, Qiu Ling would softly stroke Rèn’s unbraided black hair, telling her ancient wondrous fairy tales in a hushed singing whisper.

…She told her stories of righteous sword immortals dressed in flowing white silk who soared across the clouds on shining blades, of celestial palaces carved from solid pearl where hunger and winter did not exist, and of ancient mountain guardians who watched over poor honest orphans and shielded them from every evil under the sky.

Lulled by the steady, gentle rhythm of Qiu Ling’s heartbeat, Rèn’s tears would dry, and she would drift off into the safest, deepest sleep a child could ever know.

…There was also Senior Brother Wei Heng.

Wei Heng was seventeen, tall, broad-shouldered, and fiercely ambitious, possessing an exceptional grade-seven metal spirit root that allowed him to manipulate blade-qi with sharp crackling brilliance.

He was the pride of Quiet Pine, the only disciple who could cleanly cleave a river stone in two with a wooden training sword yet, for all his talent, he was endlessly kind to the little sweeper girl.

“Up you go, little broom!” Wei Heng would roar with a hearty, booming laugh, swooping down to hoist eight-year-old Rèn clean off the flagstones, swinging her up to sit high atop his wide shoulders.

Rèn would clutch his dark hair with both hands, squealing with giddy delight as he sprinted across the courtyard, leaping over the vegetable patches and spinning in dizzying circles until both of them collapsed laughing onto the grass.

“One day, little broom,” Wei Heng would declare, leaning on his elbows and staring out toward the eastern horizon where the sprawling city towers lay far beyond the mountain mist. “I’m going to make it into the great leagues… I’m going to join a grand sect in the eastern province, earn thousands of spirit stones, and come back here with an entire wagon train of silk robes, fresh pork, and glazed plums for you and the Master…! You just wait and see! I’ll make our Quiet Pine famous across the entire continent!”

Rèn would sit beside him, chewing on a sweet stalk of mountain grass, nodding with unshakeable faith in her big brother’s promise.

On the morning of Rèn’s eighth birthday, the Master summoned her to the rear veranda overlooking the bamboo sea.

The old man was sitting on a low pine stump, a curved draw-knife in his swollen hands, shaving clean white curls from a heavy branch of mountain ash.

Rèn padded over, her straw broom held loosely in her right hand, tilting her head with quiet curiosity.

The Master finished shaving the hilt, reached for a strip of dried sharkskin, and bound the grip with tight, even wraps of coarse hemp cord.

He set the knife down, stood up with a low, creaking groan in his knees, and held the newly carved wooden sword out toward her.

…It was a simple unadorned weapon, roughly thirty inches in length, perfectly balanced with a flat wooden guard and a blunt rounded tip.

Rèn dropped her broom, her dark crimson eyes widening as her breath caught in her throat.

“Master…?” she whispered.

“Take it, child,” the Master said gently, pressing the wrapped hilt into her small, calloused fingers. “The testing stone did not lie… Your channels are blocked, your bones cannot hold spiritual qi, and the heavens did not gift you the path of a flying immortal so you will never be a cultivator.”

He paused, his wrinkled hand resting softly on the top of her wild head with his thumb brushing a stray black lock from her eyes.

“But everyone in this world should be able to protect themselves,” the Master continued, his tone turning as unyielding as granite. “A sword does not care about your bloodline, and it does not care about the grade of your spirit root… It only cares about the sweat you pour into its steel. I will teach you one basic sword form… Only one… A step, a guard, and a cut. Do it a thousand times a day, and do it well.”

He stepped back, planting his cloth shoes shoulder-width apart on the stone with his wooden walking staff held horizontally before his waist.

“Watch my feet,” the Master instructed.

He took a single measured forward step with his left foot sliding smoothly across the granite, lowering his center of gravity until his hips were locked like an iron bridge.

His staff snapped upward, bracing across his chest in a tight angled high guard, and then whipped downward in a clean, vertical cut that displaced the morning air with a sharp whistling hiss.

SWOOSH!

“Step,” the Master said, resetting his stance. “Guard… Cut… That is all. The rest is just distance and timing.”

From that autumn day forward, Rèn’s life gained a second sacred duty.

Every evening, after the three hundred and twelve steps had been swept spotless and the chicken coops were latched tight against weasels, Rèn would take her mountain-ash wooden sword and stand at the top of the stone staircase overlooking the purple twilight.

Rèn took a forward step, sliding her bare sole against the granite… She raised the hilt, locking the guard before her ribs and she cut downward, driving the blunt wooden tip through the autumn wind with everything her eight-year-old shoulders could muster.

SWISH!

“One,” she whispered under her breath.

Step… Guard… Cut…

SWISH!

“Two.”

The older disciples sitting on the dormitory veranda would laugh, pointing and tossing pumpkin seeds at each other as they watched the scrawny little girl swing her wooden stick against the empty mist.

“Look at her go,” one boy chuckled. “She’s been swinging that branch for an hour! Does she think she can scare a mountain tiger with a broom-stick strike?”

Rèn never looked back, and she never stopped.

By the five-hundredth swing, her forearms would burn with blinding, screaming fatigue, her palms blistered and raw where the coarse hemp cord bit into her skin.

By the eight-hundredth swing, her skinny knees would tremble like aspen leaves, her breath coming in ragged wheezing gasps, sweat dripping from her untamed black bangs and splashing against the stone risers.

…Yet, every single evening, sitting on the third step just below her with her knees tucked against her chin, was Qiu Ling.

No matter how cold the wind blew from the peaks, the lotus-faced Senior Sister sat there wrapped in a woolen shawl, watching every single awkward, trembling repetition with shining, adoring dark eyes.

And when Rèn’s arms finally gave out and she collapsed onto her knees, panting in the dirt, Qiu Ling would throw her hands together, clapping with bright joy that echoed down the bamboo valley.

CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!

“Wonderful, Rèn!” Qiu Ling would cheer, running up the steps with a damp cloth and a gourd of warm sweetened water. “That cut was five inches lower than yesterday… Your guard was perfectly level! You’re going to be the most formidable swordswoman in the entire province!”

Rèn would lean her sweating forehead against Qiu Ling’s shoulder, drinking the water with greedy gulps with a fierce glowing pride blooming in her chest that chased away every ounce of exhaustion.

When Rèn turned eight and a half, a major dispatch arrived from the eastern plains.

…Senior Brother Wei Heng had been officially accepted into the Heavenly Sword Court.

It was the greatest righteous sect in the entire eastern provinces, a legendary sanctuary of ten thousand pristine white-robed sword immortals whose floating pagodas pierced the clouds.

To have an orphan from a crumbling backwater mountain like Quiet Pine chosen by their recruitment elders was an honor so vast that the village elders down in the valley slaughtered three whole pigs in celebration.

The entire sect walked down the three hundred and twelve stone steps together to see him off at the dirt highway.

Wei Heng wore brand-new white linen robes that Qiu Ling had spent a week tailoring by candlelight, his hair tied with a clean blue silk ribbon, looking taller and more handsome than he ever had in his life.

Rèn thought white was the most beautiful color in the world however in a little bit, she would never think so again.